Friday, October 10, 2008

Tech Citizenship

Local techs lending a hand

By Mass High Tech Staff

Workscape takes charity to the road

Workscape Inc., a provider of outsourced benefits and talent management software, has kicked off its Workscape Gives Back road trip. Covering 10 cities in two weeks, employees will be driving Saturn VUE Hybrids to make monetary and food donations to local food pantries in cities where the company has customers.

The campaign kicked off on Sept. 30 at the company’s headquarters in Marlborough. Other stops include Berkeley Heights, N.J.; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; New York City; and Wilton, Conn. The tour will head to Detroit on Oct. 13 before wrapping up in Chicago on Oct. 14.   

At the opening event, Workscape employees were joined by guests including Massachusetts Sen. Pamela Resor; Mary Pat Gibbons, district representative from Rep. Jim McGovern’s staff; Karen Kisty, executive aide to Marlborough Mayor Nancy Stevens; Chris Chirco from the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism; and former Boston Celtics player and founder, president and CEO of WARM2Kids M.L. Carr.

Workscape also donated $1,000 and nonperishable food items to the Hudson Community Food Pantry and the Marlborough Community Services’ food pantry. It also donated $1,000 to WARM2Kids and the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism during the event.
 

Wind power talk helps fund Quincy robotics team

The Quincy Technology Council, Quincy 2000 Collaborative and Quincy Public Schools’ Helping Youth Pursue Engineering and Robotics (HYPER) team hosted an informational event in Quincy on wind turbines. Mayor Thomas Koch and Sen. Michael Morrissey, chair of the joint committee on telecommunications, utilities and energy, joined other speakers to discuss how wind power will affect Quincy in the coming years. Proceeds from the event were donated to HYPER to help them toward their goal of attending next year’s regional competitions.

Morrissey will host another informational event on wind turbines and other alternative energy generating methods on Oct. 14 at the Quincy Historical Society from 7 to 8:30 p.m. For more information, contact Robert Gordon at gordon.rp@pg.com.

Virtusa recognized for disaster software work

Virtusa Corp. has been selected as one of 11 finalists for the U.S. Secretary of State’s 2008 Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE). The Westborough-based company was recognized for its time and resource contribution to the Sahana disaster recovery system, Virtusa Campus Reach, Virtusa Digital Reach, and information technology advocacy programs aimed at improving IT skills and curriculum in Sri Lanka.

Sahana, which was developed on an open-source platform following the 2004 tsunami, is managed and led by the Lanka Software Foundation, and has been used in the aftermath of disasters in Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and China. The Sahana system has also received awards for its contributions to disaster recovery efforts.

ACE recognizes the important role U.S. businesses play abroad as good corporate citizens. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will announced the 2008 winners in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 6.

Virtusa (Nasdaq: VRTU) is a global IT services company that provides IT consulting, technology implementation and application outsourcing services.

TripAdvisor wants you to vote on who gets its $1M

TripAdvisor LLC has launched its “More than Footprints” philanthropic initiative. The Newton travel advisory company will donate $1 million to five travel-related nonprofit organizations.

The company has chosen to take a democratic approach to disbursing the money by having an online voting site. People can vote for one of the five nonprofits by going to www.tripadvisor.com/causes now through Nov. 9. The results will be announced Nov. 12.

The five nonprofit organizations are: Conservation International, Doctors Without Borders, National Geographic Society, The Nature Conservancy and Save the Children.

Funds will be disbursed based on the percentage of total votes and each of the organizations is guaranteed to receive at least $50,000.